I'm back from Malibu!

I was in southern California for two and a half weeks attending SongFest, a professional program for singers and pianists. Boy, was it great. (I blabbed about it some on my "regular life" blog, if you're interested.) I spent most of my time attending masterclasses and coachings with three of America's prominent composers (Ricky Ian Gordon, Jake Heggie, James Primosch), Boston's Bach gurus (Craig Smith and Peggy Pearson), two of the finest accompanists the English-speaking world has to offer (Graham Johnson and Martin Katz), and several other top-notch faculty like Janice Feltyy and Judith Kellock. I got to premiere a piece by John Harbison.
Daniel had a great time with his Oma (my mom) and uncle Joe (my brother) and they had a great time with him, and we even got to spend a little time at the beach. All in all, worth it.

You know what? I even knit a little bit. See?



This the "Fern Lace Wrap" from Little Box of Scarves. I'm using Louisa Harding Kimono Angora in the color "teal" that I scored on sale at Lakeside Fibers (though that was the trip they were so rude to me that I considered never going back.) It turns out that sitting in the same auditorium for several hours a day and watching master classes makes one a tiny bit restless, so starting day two, I brought knitting. Everyone else either resorted to text-messaging or doing Sudokus. By week two, I was too busy running to rehearsals and pre-occupied with all the music I was doing to pull out the knitting, and the sunny southern California weather doesn't exactly inspire one to pull out the warm, fuzzy yarn. Still, I got through one skein plus a little more.

Next up:



This didn't come along with me to California, but I've made a little progress on it all the same. It's a hand towel out of chunky tweedy linen by Euroflax in a diamond moss-stitch pattern from B. Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns. I realize linen softens after a trip through the washer and dryer, but it doesn't make it particularly fun to work with initially. This stuff is full of knots, too. Despite all this, I like the way it's turning out, and if I don't think it's too "becky home-ecky" looking, it might be a wedding present in a few weeks.